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Respectful Insolence is a repository for the ramblings of the aforementioned pseudonymous surgeon/scientist concerning medicine and quackery, science and pseudoscience, history and pseudohistory, politics, and anything else that interests him (or pushes his buttons). Orac's motto: "A statement of fact cannot be insolent." (OK, maybe it can be just a little bit insolent.)

EneMan belatedly rings in the New Year

I know, I know, I've been remiss. However, it just didn't seem right to post the now-traditional first-of-the-month post given what was going on around the 1st. So I held off.

It's time to get back to normal. As a hint of what the theme of this year will be, I present:

Yes, this year, EneMan will be traveling through time to participate in various historical events. Some of them will undoubtedly surprise you. (This also gives me an idea for hosting the History Carnival, but I bet even Sharon won't go for it.)

First on the list, I bet you never knew that EneMan was at Mt. Everest when Sir Edmund Hillary climbed it in 1953:

I'm guessing that costume must be pretty warm, otherwise EneMan's contents would freeze, and he would no longer be useful for his intended purpose. Of course, I'd hate to consider using him for his intended purpose with ice cold contents.

In any case, as we proceed through the year, you'll see just how deeply involved EneMan has been in our history. I bet you never suspected!

You know, now that I think about it, in 2006 EneMan's a lot like The Doctor:

On second thought, no he's not. For one things, the Doctor has a much cooler means of transportation, and I have a hard time believing EneMan as a Time Lord. More importantly, no matter how outrageous the Doctor's various incarnations have dressed, none of them has ever dressed up like a giant enema--although, if given the choice, I think I'd rather that the sixth Doctor (the guy with the umbrella) had dressed up like a giant enema. It would have been less of an eyesore than his actual outfit was.

(As an aside, it turns out that the SciFi Channel has purchased the rights to air the first season of the new incarnation of Doctor Who and will be showing the episodes this spring.)

Finally, as always, a record of every appearance of EneMan since the very beginning:

Comments

Re: #6, are you sure that isn't a picture of young Tony Blair? (Later to be PM of GB and GWB's bitch.)"Next month, EneMan gives a nod to our Canadian readers..."We don't need nods, O Orac, we need fast, fast relief!VKW

Slightly off topic. I just got a copy of "new scientist" and it has a little article on the discovery of lots of plant viruses in human fecal matter.

They weren't sure if the viruses were just concentrated there or if they were multiplying there, but the one virus they discussed was one that causes a disease on chili pepper plants. They said they found little of the virus on fresh peppers in the store but lots of it in hot pepper sauce...

The not so off topic part is that the scientists involved thought that they might take these viruses (that have RNA?) and put a bit of human pathogen protein into them (transgenically?) and make an oral vaccine (or maybe an enema vaccine?, just speculating) for diseases like measles... I don't remember if they used measles as an example.

I wonder if the antivaxers could find something wrong with that... yeah, probably.

I'm thinking Andrew Wakefield should have been looking for the tobacco mosaic virus instead of the measles....

Orac is but a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. That Orac has chosen his pseudonym based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights from an old British SF show whose special effects were renowned for their early 1980's BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction for television ever produced, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.) Orac tries to keep his insolence respectful, but admittedly sometimes fails in the cases of obvious quackery and pseudoscience, attacks on him, very poor critical thinking skills, bigotry, and just general plain stupidity.